


love, come run away with me

by ambs_ace



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armin Alert is a Good Friend, But his POV is only used for the epilogue, Eren Yeager Loves Levi, Eren and Levi deserve to be happy, Every side character but Armin is only mentioned, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Healthy Relationships, Homophobia is referenced once, How Do I Tag, Implied Sexual Content, Levi Loves Eren Yeager, Levi/Eren Yeager-centric, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, New Orleans, New York City, Not Canon Compliant, On the Run, POV Eren Yeager, POV First Person, POV Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Runaway Eren Yeager, Runaway Levi Ackerman, Running Away, Soft Levi/Eren Yeager, Teenage Eren Yeager, Teenage Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), runaways - Freeform, teenage runaways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28415727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambs_ace/pseuds/ambs_ace
Summary: In which troubled teen-prodigy, Eren Jaeger, and reluctant conglomerate heir, Levi Ackerman, realise their shared plans to run away and choose to abandon their pretentious Catholic school and the futures laid out for them for a journey across the states together.
Relationships: Levi & Eren Yeager, Levi/Eren Yeager
Kudos: 50





	love, come run away with me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Let Me Swoon Over You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14104134) by [teenuviel1227](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenuviel1227/pseuds/teenuviel1227). 



> I was feeling really uninspired and literally living for the run away aesthetic when I first heard the song, Robbers by The 1975, and then later I read the Jaehyungparkian fic, Let Me Swoon Over You by teenuviel1227, and together they helped me create this twenty-two thousand word monstrosity (that was only supposed to be around two-three thousand words) in around two months.  
> 
> 
> This is my first time publishing anything on the archive, so I have no idea how the copyright or even the publishing process works. Please forgive me if I make any mistakes (and if you could let me know where I've gone wrong, that would be great), and just know that all rights for Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin belong to Hajime Isayama, and that this fic is inspired by Let Me Swoon Over You by teenuviel1227, so go check it out.  
> 
> 
> Also, this is un-beta'ed and cross-posted on Wattpad under @ambs_ace.  
> 
> 
> Here is the playlist for it: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/379WbwRgnNajvaHPEntYdo  
> 
> 
> Enjoy!!

I live by lists. Bullet points scribbled hastily on greasy diner napkins and lined pages torn from my school books. Words strung in barely distinguishable chains that consist of random memos, notes regarding surrounding events, the odd song lyric, and even reminders written in all capital letters to smile as though my life is in order when I’m forced to visit my family. I don’t always keep them. I neither have the space in my cramped apartment and nor do I care what becomes of most of them. More often than not they’ll find themselves rotting in the bottom of a rubbish bin in a dingy back alley. The few I do hold onto are slotted between the dog-eared pages of my notebook for safe keeping. They’re usually the ones I don’t dare risk letting anyone else see. Elaborate plans of an escape from suburban life, St. Albans and the noose of religious rules tied around my neck every time I’m within its pristine walls and in the presence of its suffocating elitism. The names of potential stops, states and cities, scribbled in nondescript black and blue ink. Things I need to remain hidden from all prying eyes so that when I run away, I can do so without being tethered to this town.

I’m writing one now. Contemplating which personal belongings I will take with me, and which I will leave behind. It’s not a question of sentiment so much as practicality, and I’m not stupid enough to carry anything that can be traced back to the façade of a life I’ve had to build for myself here. I could probably pick and choose on the day I hit the road. But it’s the practice of recording the possibilities that has somewhat become a sentimental ritual to me.

_\- Raincoat. The one from the thrift shop, not the one mom bought me last year._

Although the latter is probably a lot warmer, lined with duck down rather than being a single nylon covering, I’ve worn it during the short walk to school essentially every cold and wet winter’s day this year. Considering spring here is still just as blustery with showers that come and go without warning, it will likely be the first item of clothing listed in my profile description should my parents file a missing person’s report. Or worse: if my father hires a private investigator to find their lost son and child prodigy.

Scowling at where ink curls across the paper, I press my shoulders harder into the uncomfortable wooden edge of the shelf behind me and scratch another bullet point. It takes more effort to see what I’m writing than necessary with how dark it is in the shadow of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, but this is _my_ alcove. _My_ spot. One of the few places in this shithole of a town where I can scheme hidden away from all prying eyes.

_\- Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami._

This one is an indulgence. Something I can imagine reading in the backseat of my car or between the dubiously clean sheets of cheap motels off the highway and in the very outskirts of the communities I pass through. It rests in my lap now, the pages, tired and worn from overuse, open on chapter six to give the illusion that I’m making notes on its contents for an essay or some other academic feat. I’ve never used it for anything school-related. Despite being an inanimate object, it’s seen more of who I’ve become beneath the mask than anyone else in a long, long time, and I’ve come to value its company.

The sharp echo of footsteps on the hardwood floor pull me from my thoughts. They’re approaching me, slow and steady, and I glance up in time to see Levi Ackerman sauntering over, one hand shoved elegantly into the pockets of his black slacks, his grey eyes flashing like liquid silver behind a curtain of fine black hair parted perfectly down the centre. His bag is slung over one shoulder, his polo unbuttoned at the collar, and where mine is completely abandoned, his cravat hangs untied around his neck. There’s something starved about his gaze that has me thinking that he would devour the entire world if he had the chance, and whether it's because of his whetted cheekbones or the knife I’ve heard he has in the place of a tongue, I often wonder how many people have cut themselves on his sharp edges.

He folds his arms across his chest, and leans against the row of bookcases to my left, expression caught somewhere between being coy and sly. “Tch. The year’s almost over, Bright Eyes. One would assume you’d know that there’s an assembly every Thursday morning.”

I shrug, snapping my notebook shut with what I hope is an air of nonchalance, and mirror his expression. I have no doubt it looks different on my softer features, but I’m hoping that my eyes, so commonly described as soulful by those around me, are expressive enough to do me justice. “I do know, I just don’t care to attend.”

“Oh?” He raises a thin brow and purses his pretty lips, the golden rim of his prefect’s badge glittering in the buttery light streaming weakly down from the ceiling behind him. For a split second I worry that he’ll report me for ditching—something which I have no doubt will draw unnecessary attention to me and subsequently set my plans much further back than I’d like. But then he shucks his bag off onto the floor and sinks to sit cross-legged on the ground opposite me with a heavy sigh, his mouth suddenly twisted in obvious disgust. “Well, that makes two of us. I honestly can’t fucking stand sitting in the front row. Between you and me, Father Pixis spits an awful lot more than he talks. Every time he starts some speech about resilience, I think about how much fucking resilience I’m going to need just to make it through the fucking hour.”

I stare at him for a second, my eyes narrowed as I try to make sense of this—whatever the hell _this_ is. Levi Ackerman, notorious for being both a wealthy senior student prefect with grades that rival mine and an antisocial hard-ass made up of ire and pure spite, is sitting with me, eyes oddly unguarded—almost as though he’s testing the waters with me here, and having spoken more than I have ever heard him say before outside of compulsory class presentations. But even before I started mimicking him, I could already see the same feverish desire to live something more than the pitiful existences we’ve been given burning in his gaze the same way it does mine. The thought has me grinning. Might as well make the most of this while it lasts.

“Ah, prefects sit in the front,” I hum, acknowledging his strife. And then: “You don’t have to be a prefect, you know?”

He blinks at me, not owlishly but rather considering, eyes contemplative, before huffing out a laugh. “You’re right in some ways, Kid. But besides my uncle breathing down the back of my neck all the fucking time, you know how you escape the authorities? You _become_ the authorities. That way when you run away, you can actually get away without being caught. No one looks twice at a prefect when they say they need to miss class or an assembly to study for an upcoming exam or work on a project for the company they’ll take over in the next couple of years—or at least, that’s if my uncle gets what he wants.”

My eyes widen and all I can comprehend is: “You want to run away?” The _‘too’_ tagged onto the end goes unspoken, but far from unheard, and I wince at the sheer obviousness of it. There goes the secret I’ve been holding so close to my chest for so long.

Levi just nods, equally accepting as he appears curious. “‘Course. You too, huh? What’s a kid like you been through that has you wanting to run away?”

I don’t even have to close my eyes for garish images of the jagged point of a broken broom handle wedged between a man’s ribs, a knife embedded deep within another man’s chest, and a third body lying lifeless in a corner, crimson strokes of blood blooming like the petals of a rose through the fabric of their shirts, to stain my vision. I don’t regret what I did. I saved my sister’s life, and she saved mine; neither of us would still be here if we hadn’t acted the way we did. But ending two lives myself and having helped end another at the horrifyingly young age of nine poses some questions about one’s own morality, and now I don’t believe myself to be capable of anything beyond destruction when it comes to human life. The blood on my hands never frightened me, and that fact in itself scares me to the point where I’ve decided I won’t ever willingly step foot in an ER or even a hospital as a doctor myself. I might play the part of the obedient son willing to follow the route of medical practice my parents have laid out for me, but I have taken lives before and, as a result, I sure as hell don’t trust myself to patch up the lives of others.

“My father is adamant that I follow in his footsteps. Says it will do the world a lot of good or some shit like that. But after…” I shake my head violently as if to banish the memories of that night that still haunt me from my mind. “I… I don’t think I’m cut out for saving people.”

“And he doesn’t want to hear that?”

I’m unable to stop the humourless bark of a laugh that slips from between my lips. “Not anymore than I imagine your uncle wants to hear that you want to run away instead of being his heir or whatever. I haven’t told him. Don’t plan to. By the time he realises I’m not just a missing person, I’ll be long gone.” I shrug with an air of apathy I don’t really have, and let my head drop back against the edge of the bookshelf behind me. “Besides, med school is supposed to be a nightmare.”

He snorts indignantly, slinging an arm around his knees and drawing them closer to his chest. “So is studying business and commerce at Harvard or wherever the hell my uncle has decided I’m going after graduation.”

Graduation. It’s taken this conversation for me to realise just how close it really is.

“That’s in two weeks.” The words are a murmur of disbelief spoken under my breath. If we were to stay, next year I’d be a senior, and Levi… Levi would be gone in every way he doesn’t want to be. Dragged into a life where he will never comfortably fit the mould that has been made for him. It goes without saying that if we’re to flee at all, we’ll flee in these next two weeks.

He nods, the gesture relieved in a way that would make it strangely absurd to anyone else. “Two weeks.”

Our gazes meet, and I hold the contact knowing that in just two short weeks we’ll both be gone. I’ll have finally withdrawn all the money from my savings account and my trust fund after having made weekly withdrawals for the last couple months, got in my car and driven from New York into Pennsylvania’s maze of back roads to trade it for another, more untraceable set of wheels before setting off with the intention of never looking back. Levi will no doubt execute his own plans, pack his own bags, and then he’ll be gone too. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. And yet in two weeks, the both of us will have abandoned this place and the soul-crushing futures that await us if we stay. Why not abandon it together?

“Do you want to run away with me?” My question surprises me. This is my life I’m talking about—the fate of my entire existence staked on this single escapade. And here I am, asking a virtual stranger to take it in his hands, and in return, let me take his life in mine.

But to his credit, Levi doesn’t appear to be surprised in the slightest. Instead, the corners of his thin lips curl into artful smirk, and he arches a single dark brow. “Only if _you_ run away with _me_ , Bright Eyes.”

The next few days are meticulous in planning. Perhaps if we’d had our library conversation that started us down this path earlier, we would have had a few more months to organise things. But with graduation no longer just lingering on the horizon, but actively approaching, we simply don’t have that kind of time. Laid back moments are a luxury currently unavailable to us, and yet this is perhaps the most at ease I have been in years. It’s in the kitchen of Levi’s flash apartment that we decide to sell his Mercedes and use my more modest Toyota Corolla to get us to a town where we can exchange it for a new vehicle unable to be traced back to us, conversing casually over the spread of textbooks laid out on the tabletop. He worries his Uncle Kenny will be on his ass quicker than he can cover his tracks, but selling the Benz and stowing away in my car for a start is the best option we have for at least getting away without getting caught. It’s on the roof of the science building where he encourages me to try for a prefect role for the following year. A convincing ruse that’s the first step of many in thwarting suspicion surrounding our premeditated desertion.

In all the time we’re spending together, plotting and planning away, the enigma of Levi himself is also gradually unravelling. He’s pessimistic to the bone, and often cold, to me and to others. But I don’t think he means to be. Sometimes the weight on his shoulders just becomes too much for his spine to bear and it leaves him bitter. Our discussion in the library remains the one of the longest casual conversations we’ve had, but I’m learning that his wintery indifference is a defensive front that takes a while for him to bring down. Little things like the way he’ll scrub at dirty spots on the school desks, muttering things under his breath such as, _“I’ve seen enough filth to last a lifetime”_ , and how he’ll only hold his tea by the lip of the cup in my company lets me know that I’m, in the very least, considered something more than everyone else in his life. On rare accounts, he indulges me in this, showing his growing fondness for me by pressing me up against the shelves of my alcove in the library or leaning over the centre console of my car to mark my neck with his lips. 

When the weekend hits and we’re both seated on my second-hand couch (Levi covers his end with a throw he filched from his own apartment, having been very reluctant to sit on it otherwise after seeing the beer stains left by its previous owners), I’m all too eager to return the favour. The cushions smell of hangover, but it’s easier to ignore than usual when Levi’s freshly showered and carries the scent of my shampoo. Even more so when he kisses me breathless into the couch arm, his fingers tangled in my hair and his knee slipping between my thighs. 

But even after that, we don’t do normal dates like normal people. Instead, we’ll cook together and then afterwards, he’ll wash the dishes and I’ll dry them, pestering him with wayward touches until he swats me with a dishcloth. Or on the odd occasion when it’s warm and not raining outside, we’ll wander the streets aimlessly together in the dark, our hands in our pockets but standing close enough to share breaths beneath the cover of the stars. I suppose with the schemes we’ve so carefully thought out, we’re too much of a far cry from normal to partake in such mundane activities. For now, at least. Maybe one day, when we’re far, far away from here, we will go out on normal dates and be normal people. Catch movies on our days off and go out to fancy restaurants for dinner. But in the meantime, I rather enjoy the lack of normalcy.

The following Monday, Levi has an associate teetering on the line between friend and acquaintance make us fake IDs. He says she’s a little bit mad, but asks no questions so long as he gets her access to some of St. Alban’s more explosive chemicals in the teachers’ cabinet in the science lab with his prefect's privileges. The IDs themselves are incredibly realistic—easily passable as being genuine—and while it’s hard to rein in my concern about having an outsider involved even the slightest bit in our plans, Levi trusts them, and I’m learning to trust his judgement.

Our new identities suit us well, too. _Aaron and Henri Petit:_ a pair of young newlyweds travelling across the country on a rather unique honeymoon. I doubt either of our families will think of that one. For all they know, we don’t know anything about each other and just happened to jump ship on the same date.

“Tch.” 

I lift my head from where I’m writing another list on a page in my notebook—this one involving detailed bullet points of our plan for Thursday—only to find him scowling at his new driver’s license. “What?”

He huffs, his face the picture of fond exasperation as he slides it across the library floor for me to look at. His fingers linger, the pad of his thumb brushing over my knuckles, and I try to ignore how such a simple touch sets my insides aflame. “My name. She had way too much fun with it. _Petit_ means ‘little’ in French.”

I’m unable to help the grin that breaks out across my features at that. It widens as he flicks the butt of his cigarette in my direction, leaning over to pinch my waist through my shirt and muttering a half fond, half terse, _“Brat”_ , under his breath, his own lips twitching with the beginnings of a smile.

Later, when I slip the IDs into my bag where they join the maps we bought the previous week and the twin silver rings purchased from the chemist for fourteen dollars a piece before sliding into bed beside him, pressing my frozen toes against his warm legs, he says the same thing, curling an arm around my waist to draw me closer to his chest and pressing a sweet open-mouthed kiss to my nape. As we lie awake between the sheets, mulling over the route we have in mind, I know that it’s only because our lives were tearing at the seams did we end up here, and it’s amazing to think of the lengths to which we’ll go to repair the damage done to the other.

We’re planning to go west, out Nevada-California way where Vegas and LA wait for us in a halo of blinking lights, or further south, where we can hide among the festivities and unique diversity of New Orleans. By way of land and whatever wheels we can get our hands on, of course. Being a pair of rich kids, the airports will likely be the first places our families check for us. We’ll trade my Corolla for another car somewhere between Philadelphia and Baltimore (the sooner the better and the less likely we are to be tracked down), and then swap vehicles again in Tennessee before either heading down to Louisiana or making the long drive to Los Angeles (we’ll decide on the way; it’s more inconspicuous that way). If all goes to plan, we’ll empty our accounts of every cent—the money intended for our tuition following our graduation from St. Albans included. Between us we’ve saved up just under twenty-four grand. Sure, it’s not enough to live leisurely once we reach our final destination (that is if there will even be a final destination), but it should be enough to get across the state without too much financial trouble, and I’m anticipating spending it on what I want rather than the education I’ve been forced to endure these last couple of years. 

My mind is becoming more and more overrun with images of sunsets framed by the windows of moving cars and the pair of us, smoking cigarettes out the back of roadside motels. I’ll be hunched over my notebook atop my bed, my pen following the familiar path of bullet points along a waiting margin, or on the phone to my mother and sister, and all I can do is imagine the life that awaits us the second we wave this place goodbye.

_“We look forward to seeing you in the summer, Eren. We’ve missed you.”_

_Sorry, mom, ‘Kasa, but I’ll be somewhere halfway across the country by then, chasing the dreams I never got the chance to pursue with Levi by my side instead of you._

Though it may not seem like it, I’ll miss them. They are the only ones I’m sorry to be leaving behind. But leave them behind, I will if it’s what it takes for this fresh start I’ve spent so much time planning to succeed.

Still, when Thursday—the day of our great escape—finally rolls around, the photo of the three of us grinning at the top of the Eiffel Tower with Mickey Mouse ears on our heads and Paris in the background is one of the first few personal belongings I shove into my bag. At first glance, we seem like a perfect picturesque family, and it’s a suitable memento for them because without my father present, we were a perfect, picturesque family. But upon closer inspection, you can see just how dead my eyes are, how flaky my smile is next to the genuine upturn of theirs. I notice the difference when I retrieve it from where I’ve dumped my stuff atop my unmade bed, having begun to pack for the second time (I pack and repack my stuff, going over the lists scrawled across the pages of my notebook to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything), and make note to only remember them that way. 

Once packed up, I leave the dingy apartment without a second glance. It’s a decrepit one-bedroom thing with an attached bathroom, tiny kitchen and combined dining/living area. Something my parents would find appalling. But it’s saved me a lot of money in the long run—money that will be better spent building my new life with Levi. 

Our plan itself is simple but meticulous. With all the time and effort we put into tying up all the possible loose ends and little details, there’s no way it couldn’t be. We’ll both leave for school as if nothing has changed—as if this isn’t our last normal before we dive headfirst into a runaway romance like a more reserved (I say this instead of less murderous because our hands—mine especially—aren’t exactly clean either), much gayer Bonnie and Clyde. Only I’ll stop at the ATM outside the chemist on my way and drain our accounts of whatever’s left, while Levi will drive from his flash apartment complex to the address of the man buying his Benz, exchange it for hard cash, and walk to St. Albans in time for morning roll call. I’ll meet him in the library (ironic that it should be where both our first and last official meeting in this town take place), from which we’ll then sneak through the empty halls and jump the six foot fence beside the outdoor pool to get to my car where it will be parked on the other side next to the curb. From there, it’s several long hours behind the wheel to Philadelphia and the second phase of our new life as teenage runaways. 

It’s going to be tough. We’re diving into a sea of chances with only our eyes and plans reliably amiable to change to guide us. Not quite blind, but with very little experience to go off of. And not to mention, all those that are bound to chase after us; my parents, Levi’s believably formidable Uncle Kenny, and the authorities who do so under their influence. But I think we’ll make it. Because even if we have little else going for us, we’re determined and stubborn to a tee, and no matter how strong the cage we’re placed in, we’ll never submit to the wills of those who put us there. Driven by every headstrong bone in our bodies, we’ll make it, despite all the odds against us. 

We _have_ to.

I’m merging with the uniformed bodies entering St. Albans, my head ducked, keeping my eyes trained on the collar of the red-head (who seems to be eating… a potato?) in front of me should I give away our intentions for today, when my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I check it in a bathroom stall, the screen lights up with a text from Levi.

_**Benz sold, Bright Eyes. Plan’s a go.** _

With a heavy exhale, I press my forehead against my fist against the stall door, unable to repress the wild exhilaration surging up within me. My cheeks burn with the strain of my grin, but I relish it because we’re gonna do this and _we’re gonna make it_.

Levi meets me in our library alcove thirteen minutes later, dressed in a baggy black hoodie (one of mine) and sinfully tight black skinny jeans that have rips right up from the ankles to his slender thighs. My eyes have been glued to my phone, continuously checking the time to make sure that he’s not late—that nothing has gone wrong due to unforeseen circumstances, my fingers twitching with the desire to flip through my notebook, my _lists_ , just in case we’ve overlooked or forgotten something. It’s not until he taps the underside of my chin, silver eyes flashing fondly in the dark, do I snap out of whatever compulsive daze I was in.

“You ready to go, Love?”

“Mmhmm,” I hum, leaning into the chaste kiss he presses to my temple. It’s a sweet contrast to the precarious edge we’re about to fling ourselves off of. The calm within the storm and the warmth found in the centre of a wildfire—something very us. “As ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s get out of here. I’d hate for them to notice that your pretty prefect’s ass is missing too soon.”

The exasperated cuff I receive to the back of the head is every bit worth hearing his dry laughter as we slink out of the library and in the direction of the school pool.

One of us has to check the street for people passing by so I climb over the fence first, leaving my bag at Levi’s feet. The coast is clear, and when I let him know, Levi tosses our bags over before clambering over himself to join me on the other side. The movement tugs his hoodie up at the waist, revealing a tantalising sliver of the ivory skin of his midriff, and his fine hair, styled in a well-kempt undercut, falls over his eyes in a gauzy curtain of black. I stare at him unabashed, marvelling at how he looks as though he was made for this life—as if he has been living the past eighteen years asleep and has finally woken up, bitter and ready to carve his own path in the world. Rebellion has never suited anyone more than it does him.

“Damn,” I murmur lowly, tossing him the keys to my—to our car. Because I still have to change out of my uniform and the Corolla is not directly associated with him, he’ll be driving us to our first stop or until we can hawk it for another vehicle. It’s something we discussed the previous Friday while lying spent in the backseat of his car after I went down on him.

He smirks the same sly smirk he wore when he first approached me in the library, and I’m reminded just how deeply the look is seared into my memory. “You should see yourself. You’ve lit up like I’ve never seen before.”

“Yeah?” My voice is softer than I imagined, and my fingers pause in the act of opening the passenger side door.

He flashes me a rare grin over the shiny dark blue rooftop of the car. “Without a doubt.”

We don’t stop anywhere until our first night of freedom is mostly over. We’re too eager to put as many miles between us and the city as possible before we rest anywhere, rightfully anxious that if we do stay anywhere so soon, we’ll be caught. Levi drives a twitchy seven hours to Maryland through the eastern edge of Pennsylvania and the nightmarish New York City traffic, the radio off the entire way on account of listening out for the tell-tale wail of sirens approaching, before we hawk the Corolla for a drab silver Subaru sedan (a Subaru _Legacy_ , the man behind the counter says as he hands us the keys) in Baltimore. It’s nothing special, and it certainly doesn’t beckon like the classic Mustang with a shiny black paint job there that looks like it drove here directly from the set of an old-style action movie. But it’s convenient with a working aircon and good mileage, clean—something that was a must have for Levi’s sanity, and it doesn’t immediately scream _fugitives on the run across the states_ —something that tops all the other checkboxes for us considering our current situation. Guaranteed, we’re not actual fugitives and haven’t actually committed a crime of any kind, but I don’t doubt for a second that we’ll be some high-profile case due to our families and the identities we’ve left behind.

I take over the wheel from there and drive us another five hours or so into West Virginia, _The Smiths_ crooning softly in the background. There were two forgotten CDs of theirs in the glovebox, and I put the first one on the second I was in the driver’s seat. The lyrics are blessedly familiar to the both of us. Somewhere in my bag there’s a T-shirt with _The Queen Is Dead_ printed on the front that used to be Levi’s before it ended up on my bedroom floor one night and inevitably in my chest of draws the next. Listening to them the same way we did on my shitty couch back in my apartment and in our old library alcove through shared headphones, the music playing on either of our phones—phones which have since been wiped clean and dumped on the side of the road somewhere between New York and Philadelphia, makes our time on the road feel more intimate. We’ve left all our troubles behind, and now it’s just us and the road ahead. 

Levi slouches in the passenger seat with dark circles under his eyes, perpetually exhausted but far too wired to fall asleep. He doesn’t sing along with me, but every so often, I’ll catch him mouthing the lyrics and he’ll gift me a tired smile, one that’s for my eyes only and says, _“we did it, Baby. We fucking did it”_ , between the wary glances he keeps shooting the rear view mirror.

“You doing okay?” I ask him as I pull into the car park of a motel just outside of Winchester. At first glance, it appears about as shifty as was expected for the places of accommodation we’d come across to be. The red neon sign flickers and is missing so many letters, the name of the place is undistinguishable, and not to mention that the decrepit building itself looks as though it might crumble in the presence of wind any speed above twenty-four miles per hour. But there are only two cars in the parking lot, one of which is parked in the single staff parking lot, and in the likelihood that we’re being chased, its dilapidated appearance might help us be overlooked should we be found. Chances are they’ll think we’re ungrateful children of privilege born with silver spoons in our mouths, and check the more luxury hotels before they search places like this. By the time they storm the building, we’ll already be long gone.

“Aside from being exhausted, in dire need of the bathroom, and more than a little paranoid that I’ll look behind us and see Kenny on our ass pointing his fucking pistol at our tires, I’m better than I’ve ever been, Bright Eyes.” He sits up slightly as the car rolls to a stop, and drags a hand down the side of his face, before cringing at his actions and scrubbing frantically at the skin of his cheek with the sleeve of his hoodie. “I also need to shower before I start to physically feel the dirt on my skin.”

I nod in agreement, removing the key from the ignition. My neck and shoulders ache from gripping the steering wheel and a shower, even one in a worn down place like this, sounds like the best thing on earth right now. “We’ll stay here two nights then. Tonight, we wash up and rest, and at some point tomorrow we can get some more food for the road, change our hair, and fill up the car. From then on, it’s either Kentucky, Ohio or Virginia.”

“I suppose it depends on where we want to end up; somewhere in busy, bustling LA, or living alongside a bayou in Louisiana?” He shrugs. “Maybe we’ll find ourselves holding up in Arizona or even in Mexico at the end of this. Maybe we won’t settle and will live life city by city. We can decide in the morning.”

“Where do you want to end up?” I twist around in my seat so that he has my full attention.

A beat of sleepy silence passes before he’s leaning over the console just enough to thread his fingers through my hair, drawing back the one stray strand that never fails to fall in front of my eyes, his pale lips stretched into a honeybee smile. “Anywhere so long as we’re together and free.”

“You know, tired you is far more cheesy than normal you. I feel as though you’re gonna wake up and remember saying that in more than just a few shades of regret.”

“Probably. But my regretting saying it won’t change the fact that it’s true.” He ducks forward to kiss my lips passionately in a way that usually ends up with us both without clothes very quickly, before pulling back and letting the hand in my hair drop back down to his side. “Come on, let’s head in. We’ve yet to celebrate our first night of freedom.”

I’m unable to help the smirk of anticipation that adorns my expression, my fingers already curling around the door hand.

“And what a celebration that will be.”

We pay cash at the counter for one room with a double bed, attached bathroom, and kitchenette. The woman behind the counter is older with grey streaks in her hair and wears her despair at having ended up where she is like an item of clothing. She stares as we come in, monolid eyes as exhausted as we feel but in a very different way. She looks as though she’s been tired for a long, long time and will continue to be for even longer. There is a touch of stabbing envy in her gaze, but it makes an appearance with the aching acknowledgement that she had her chance to be in our shoes (although, I don’t think she’s aware of our situation. If she was, I doubt she’d envy us at all) and missed it, and she welcomes us with a quiet smile. It livens a little when she checks our IDs and sees our fake marital status.

“Young love, huh? Is this the honeymoon?”

I nod in response, not having to fake the love-struck grin I flash at her, my eyes trained on Levi’s sleepy form as he leans heavily into my side. “Yeah. We wanted to see the states before settling down somewhere.”

A narrow crease forms between her sandy brows. “Surely there are better establishments to stay. I know what that sounds like from a business perspective, but if I were on my honeymoon, I know for sure I wouldn’t be staying in a place like this.”

I blink at her in surprise for a second before snapping out of it and replacing my stunned mullet expression for a sad, sheepish smile. “I’m afraid we’re a bit tight for money at the moment. We splurged a bit on the wedding so that took a good sized chunk out of our savings, and planning the ceremony had us taking quite a bit of time off work. We don’t mind too much where we stay, though. As long as we’re together.” 

The lies and half-truths come as easily as the pity in her gaze is blinding. I’m used to it—to lying. But it feels wrong to lie to her. It feels too much like cheating—like doing a serious wrong. But I can live with it when she subtracts our fee for two nights by half. As a stranger, her generosity is astounding.

“Thank you,” I murmur, adjusting my arm around Levi’s waist so that I can reach over the counter and squeeze her hand closest to the till. _“Thank you.”_

She shakes her head softly, and pats the top of my hand lightly where it blankets hers. “Don’t worry about it, Dear. You two have a nice stay now.”

When we reach our room and have the door locked and secured behind us, Levi squeezes my waist, the icy tips of his fingers tracing over the olive skin above my waist band. 

“Do you feel bad?”

My reply falls from my lips in a miserable exhale. “Yeah. But not as much as I feel glad that we’ve just saved more money for the road. My pride at having gotten away with lying to her triumphs my despair at having lied in the first place. _That’s_ what makes me feel so shitty.”

We tumble onto the bedspread, ditching our bags at the foot of the bed. I’m so drained that I can’t even bring myself to berate the overbearing zebra print pattern of the duvet or the gaudy vermillion sheets beneath them. Levi’s the same. I know because he doesn’t even cringe at the smell of mildew or the faint dust cloud that arises when our joint weight hits the old mattress.

“I think celebrating is going to have to wait till tomorrow morning, Love. As eager I am, I’m fucking exhausted.”

I scooch closer to him, burying my nose into the loose folds of his hoodie (the hoodie that was once mine). He always smells clean and kind of old fashioned; like citrus scented cleaning products and tea leaves. Homey, even. It’s reassuring that even if everything else in our lives is changing, this remains the same.

“I’m with you on that.” If I weren’t so anxious to leave this place and get back to the relative safety of the road as soon as possible, I could sleep for days. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” 

I can barely hear him through the smothering haze of unconsciousness and past his own drowsy mumbling, but the word is a promise. A promise that there will be a tomorrow where we can wake like this and that it will be the start of a new routine. A promise that tomorrow will be the beginning of our new normal.

We leave the hotel at approximately nine twenty-three the next morning. Levi’s eyes are bleary within their dark lavender circles and he glares at everything and everyone that dares venture in our general vicinity. I’m not much better with how my hair sports several gravity-defying cowlicks that refused to be tamed by even the water, shampoo _and_ conditioner available in the motel bathroom, and how I keep rubbing at my eyes every few minutes. But we’re both sated and, for now, content with how far we’ve come in the last twenty-four hours. The shower is a tiny thing barely big enough for one person, let alone two, especially when one of us is a six foot strong male, but we make it work, and I’m all too willing to let Levi press me up against the glass and make love to me in the confined space.

We enter a nearby diner twenty minutes or so later, having parked the car a little ways down the street and put on very minimal disguises just in case. Levi sets a maroon slouch beanie atop his head and slips on a pair of Ray-Bans with non-prescription lenses I wasn’t aware he had hidden in the glove box, while I let him comb through my hair with his fingers until it’s flat enough for my plain black Adidas cap to sit on top of comfortably. They’re just accessories and I doubt they’ll do much to hide our identities, especially if someone recognises our faces. But putting them on offers a sense of safety—like we can hide in plain sight wearing them or, if we’re questioned, succeed in pretending to be someone else.

The diner is dirty, but busy enough that we’ll be overlooked in our neutral outfits as just another two customers in the crowd packed into the booths and their red leather seats. Levi’s makes a quiet ‘tch’ sound, eyeing the greasy table tops with blatant disgust, and tugs on the sleeve of my hoodie, muttering under his breath, “let’s get breakfast to go.”

He gets the bacon mcmuffin, while I opt for the hotcakes with butter and maple syrup (both of which are given to me in little plastic containers). Both of us order a large cup of coffee to go as well; black and without sugar for Levi, milk and two sugars for me. The milk and sugar in mine do nothing to change the fact that it tastes like battery acid. As we exit the building, I can’t help cringe as Levi takes a sip of his (if mine is more acrid than whiskey, I can’t imagine how sharp his tastes). However, he doesn’t react beyond cutely scrunching up his nose, and after locking the food in the car, we continue onto the nearest convenience store in comfortable but wary silence.

No one approaches us—on our way to the store, inside where we scour the aisles and play the young couple fresh to married life at the counter while we wait for our purchases (bottled water, condoms, lube, hair dye, cigarettes, another pair of nonprescription, wire-framed glasses, more snack food for the journey to our destination unknown) to be scanned, or on our way back to the car. The same goes for when we pull up at a gas station just up the road and fill up the Subaru in preparation for tomorrow. Nevertheless, breathing doesn’t come easy until we’re back in the privacy and relative safety of our motel room.

Levi immediately drags the garishly orange, knitted quilt folded over the end of the bed onto the bathroom floor and sits on it to eat his breakfast over the tile. It’s not worth him chewing me out for being a ‘messy brat’ if I happen to get food on the bed or the carpet, so I join him without hesitation.

“Neat freak,” I tease lightheartedly as I catch him eyeing my fingers sticky with syrup in obvious distaste.

He rolls his eyes, prods me gently in the ribs with his bony elbow, and says with no real heat, “Brat.”

Calling the food average is a compliment it doesn't deserve. The hotcakes are slightly undercooked in the centre and the cheese in Levi’s mcmuffin tastes just as much like plastic as it looks. But it’s food and having lived off of crisps, two apples gone soft with the heat inside the car, a couple of chocolate bars, and half a bag of twizzlers most of yesterday, we’re famished enough not to care too much. We wash it down with the bitter coffee, and when that’s gone too, we dye each other’s hair.

We pick colours that don’t stand out. Natural shades that don’t especially look like we’ve both dyed our hair. Like with the beanie, glasses and cap, this is just another method of hiding in plain sight. For me, Levi chose a soft honey brown several shades lighter than my natural chestnut, murmuring something about how it will still bring out my eyes. Coupled with the glasses we just bought, I think it sort of makes me look like a worn-out librarian, kind of quiet and reserved by nature and in appearance—not really me at all. But that’s what we’re aiming for; the illusion that we’re other people. People not plagued by past lives that will chase us across the continent.

For Levi, I went with a reddish-brown colour—something along the lines of dark auburn. Unlike his natural silky black, it softens all his sharp edges, giving off the impression that he’s some short and sweet highschool boy easily swayed and easily fooled. It’s almost scary seeing how well he wears his new guise, but all he needs to do is raise a cigarette to his pale lips and mutter some vaguely irritated complaint about the state of the small café we pop to for lunch under his breath and the illusion is broken. Beneath the foreign mildness, he is still my Levi through and through.

No one questions us at the café either. The staff smile blandly, and the other customers are all too caught up in their own lives and conversation. The woman taking our orders barely even glances up from the till, only looking at us briefly when she hands us our change. But we don’t dare risk eating in, and instead get takeaway for the second time today. We do the same thing for dinner, only we order Chinese on the phone in the motel lobby and have it delivered to our room, paying cash under the door so there is no chance for our faces to be recognised. 

The next morning, our last morning in West Virginia, we rise at five a.m. before the rest of the world is awake, having set an alarm the night before. I heat up last night's leftover Chow mein in the shitty motel microwave while Levi showers and we eat together on the bathroom floor again. When we’re finished and have binned the greasy boxes, he packs all of our stuff while I shower, going by the list I made in my notebook yesterday while he was dyeing my hair, and cleans the room up a bit for the sake of the tired motel clerk (the same kind woman who charged us half of what we owed for two nights) who we woke up early under the pretenses of having reservations for the night in another state. By six o’clock, we’re back in the Subaru, Levi in the passenger seat, and me behind the wheel again, ready to drive the first few hours to wherever we choose to go.

“Where too?” I ask, glancing over at him as I turn the key in the ignition. Like mine, his body is ever so slightly tensed and alert. Not necessarily expecting the worst (the worst being either of our families standing alongside a number of armed cops and their cruisers or even sharp eyed private investigators surveying the building from the inside of their nondescript vehicles), but ready for it should fate decide to screw us over more than she already has in this life. Paranoid. We’re both so fucking wired with paranoia because should we cross paths with the cops or our families and the fucking private investigators I’m certain they have playing cat and mouse with us across the states, that will be it for us unless we can continue to evade them.

His attentive gaze sweeps the parking lot before settling on me, clearly satisfied that we are safe to leave without having to gap it down the highway. “I’m thinking maybe we take our chances with Louisiana. California sounds almost too obvious. Vegas does too, if I’m being honest. It is, after all, the City of Second Chances. For a start, at least, New Orleans is probably the safest choice for us next to Mexico. What are your thoughts?”

I quirk a teasing brow and pout at him, gazing up at him through my lashes. “So you don’t wanna get hitched with me in Vegas, Baby?”

He scoffs in a very Levi-like manner, but his quicksilver eyes flash with appraisal at the challenge (a welcome distraction if there ever was one) evident in my tone, and I catch the shadow of the fond half-smile that flickers across his lips in the first hesitant light of day as it peeks over the horizon. “We can get hitched anywhere, Bright Eyes. Since when does it have to be Vegas?”

I’m unable to help the full-bodied laughter that tears through me at that, and my coy persona crumbles on my features as quickly as it came to life. “Touché. Through Kentucky, then?”

He nods once, and makes a reverberant sound of agreement. “We can get to Richmond by tonight, stay the night, and make headway tomorrow. We should also trade vehicles again somewhere in Tennessee. Maybe dye our hair again as well? The more we cover our tracks and stay on the move, the better. They can’t catch us if they don’t know where to find us or even what to look for.”

There’s a solemn note to his tone, but it pales in comparison to the determination present. I can see it in the firm line of his mouth, the faint crease between his brows, the shrewd sharpness to his gaze, and how his eyes blaze with it in the early morning light. Neither of us are overly confident. Not in this especially. If anything, that fact is a relief. Overconfidence can lead to mistakes and with the situation we’re in right now, mistakes are not something we can afford to be making. However, I’m bullheaded by nature and have a reliable compulsion to plan my life according to lists, and Levi’s grown up needing to be perceptive in order to survive day-to-day life. Together, we can do this. We just have to be stubborn enough to believe it.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop? Chasing us, I mean.”

He shrugs, the nonchalance of the gesture betrayed by the tension in his shoulders. “Eventually. If they’ve decided to write off our going missing as a kidnapping, they’ll only be able to keep it for a while. Missing persons are typically presumed dead in a few years if they’re not found. And besides–” he reaches across the centre console to give my thigh a reassuring squeeze–“even if the authorities don’t declare us a cold case for another seven years or so, your father and Kenny are still both businessmen. They have more important shit to do than spend weeks trying to hunt us down, Bright Eyes. If all goes to plan for us, they’ll just be wasting their precious time, for we’ll be long gone.”

Chapped lips brush over my right cheekbone and I set my hands firmly on the steering wheel with a short nod. 

“Okay?” he murmurs, his breath hot where it caresses the shell of my ear. The sound is as pleasantly low as it is surprisingly soft, and it coaxes my immediate reply to my lips without me having to give it any thought at all.

“Okay.” 

He leans back into his own seat and buckles his seatbelt, drawing one leg up onto the upholstery. “Come on then, Brat, let’s get some ground covered before the traffic picks up.”

We drive along Interstate 64 for roughly five hours before turning to the relative privacy of side roads the closer we get to Kentucky. In that time, we watch the sunrise over the highway through the car windows, nibble on a granola bar each for breakfast, and make a quick stop for the bathroom in Huntington. It’s quiet, too. Real quiet. But even though Levi’s easily agitated from wariness and just plain exhaustion, and I’m hard pressed to keep the car going at exactly sixty-five miles per hour, it’s nice. Mundane even. In comparison to the drive from New York to Winchester, this one feels more intimate somehow. Like it’s just Levi and I, rather than us and the ominous threat of being caught. Of course, the threat is still there, but with a couple days without any complications under our belts, it’s much easier to ignore between watching Levi succumb to sleep in the passenger seat and the changes in the scenery as we drive past.

He’s using one of my sweaters as a pillow, having slotted it between his head and the closed window, and has both legs drawn up as close to his chest as possible with his seatbelt still on. An hour into his nap, I reach the state border through a very quiet back road, but I can’t bring myself to wake him until the sign for Richmond is in sight. He’s not one to relax when he sleeps, especially when in a moving vehicle. Sometimes when we slept side-by-side back in New York, he was so tense against me, I thought he was ready to run at a moment's notice. From what little he’s told me about his childhood, I understand that at one point, that was a necessity to survive. But seeing his chest rise and fall with slow and even breaths now, I know that he’s at least getting some much needed rest.

“Levi,” I murmur softly, and reach over the centre console to press the barest of touches to his shoulder. 

He’s awake almost instantly, twisting in his seat so that his back is pressed flush against the passenger-side door as if it were instinctual for him to do so. His fingers snag my wrist and hold it away from him tightly, but while narrowed dangerously, his eyes are still bleary, and he blinks aggressively to try to rid them of sleep. The second he realises whose arm is in his unforgiving grip, they soften immensely, and he drops my wrist in favour of intertwining our fingers together.

“Sorry,” he mumbles lowly as he shuffles about in his seat, resuming a comfortable position. The apology in his voice is as genuine as it is impossible to miss.

I shrug, sparing him one more reassuring glance before returning my eyes to the road. “Don’t worry about it.” There’s no need to tell him I expected as much. “We’re just about in Richmond.”

In my peripheral vision, I watch as he shifts his gaze to the approaching town beyond the windscreen. His steely eyes are appraising, and although he’s visibly still a little stiff, the way the hair on the side of his head that was nuzzled into my sweater holds a lot of static coupled with how incredibly subdued he seems as he returns from the hazy edge of unconsciousness mellows his appearance. He looks so real in this moment. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come already—how much freedom we’ve gained in the last forty-eight hours, and of what we’re running to at the end of all of this.

“How do you feel about carrying on?” he asks as I slow the car down to the speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour as we pass Richmond’s _‘welcome’_ sign, his gaze no longer situated on the view outside the window, but rather fixated on me instead. “I know it’s rather spontaneous, but we can probably make it to Memphis around ten or eleven o’clock tonight, even if we hawk the car for another at some point and go through Knoxville to avoid being on the main roads for a bit. And strategically speaking, spontaneity is good. Making unexpected choices will improve our chances at getting to New Orleans without getting caught almost as much as putting more distance between ourselves and New York.” He pauses shortly, squeezing my hand still clasped together with his and resting on his knee, before adding: “What do you think?”

My chest constricts warmly at this, and I’m unable to resist the lopsided grin my mouth stretches into. Levi knows I value his asking of my opinion on things concerning the pair of us. He knows that I’ve had very few people care about what I have to say in the past. Hearing him effortlessly ask to hear my perspective on things, especially on those that have an impact on our lives and our future, has me feeling more appreciated than I have in a long, long time. 

I return the gesture and squeeze his hand in reply. “I’ll pull over the second I see a public bathroom.”

We find public toilets at Lake Reba Park, and park as close as we can to the building in order to avoid the brunt of all the people present. It’s close enough to midday that lots of families have congregated around the rest area and playground to eat lunch, many of them milling around the car park as they search for their vehicles to retrieve picnic baskets and coolers from their trunks. No one pays too much attention to us, but nevertheless, we enter the toilet block separately and within several minutes of each other, giving me time to laugh lovingly at the disgusted expression Levi wears when he returns to the car, demanding that I pass him a sanitary wipe so that he can clean all the foul germs from his hands before I kiss him through the open driver’s side-door window.

He tastes bitter, like cigarettes and the truth that belies all forms of freedom. But also as warm as this unexpected flare of romance sets my insides.

“You really are a brat, you know?” he mutters when I pull back just enough for me to rest my forehead against his. His tone is gruff, though the fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips would argue that he’s not annoyed at all.

I let out a rather undignified huff of laughter. “So you’ve said.”

“Tch. You’re lucky I love you.”

Subconsciously, I’ve known it. Assumed so with how easily we went from near perfect strangers to sharing escape plans and speeding across the New York border in a car together in such a short amount of time. But it’s a bittersweet relief to hear those three words from him, especially spoken so genuinely. They’ve only been said to me a few times in my entire life. By my mother and my sister, and even one or two awkward times by my ex-boyfriend, Jean, before we quickly realised how incompatible we were (in the end, he was content to live the life laid out for him by his family and wanted to settle. I longed for anything but that. Last I heard, he found what he was looking for in the new freckled assistant secretary of his parent’s company, Marco Bodt? Bott?). I think even mine and Mikasa’s childhood friend, Armin, said it once to me when we were kids (we’d just learned that his parents passed away in a car accident overseas, and while the three of us were huddled together for comfort on his living room floor, he’d told the both of us through his tears). Never once from my father; he loved to help people, but I’m not sure he ever knew how to love those who didn’t need him to fix them. Levi’s known me personally for all of two and half weeks, and already can say them. Considering my animosity towards my father, that fact hurts more than I expected it to.

Closing my eyes, I focus on the smell of nicotine that lingers between us. There’s no reason to care about that anymore. This is my life now. Levi is my family. 

“I... I love you too.” 

My lids peel open in time for me to catch him rolling his eyes with fond exasperation.

“Mmm, I know, Bright Eyes. I know,” he hums too raw for it to be absent and lighthearted. “Now hurry up and move your ass so I can sit down. Go take a shit or whatever you need to do, and then we can get out of here.”

I’m shaking the water off my hands over the sinks when the first complication in our three days of escape occurs.

“Eren?”

The familiar voice has me freezing as it washes over me in a wave of cold, panic trickling down the length of my spine like ice. Dread floods my senses, and while I know I should move, should pretend that I haven’t just heard my name, should pretend that I am someone else, should pretend that I am Aaron Petit, newlywed husband to Henrí Petit, my joints have locked in place and Levi is back in the car, waiting for me to come back to him so that we can continue our journey without fail. My body’s gone rigid; it’s too late to pretend to be anyone else. A stranger would not react this way. They might turn to see who spoke or leave the bathroom without thinking they were being spoken to. But I’m too late. It’s over. It’s fucking over. This is it. We’re not gonna make it. 

_Oh god, we’re not gonna make it._

“Eren? _Eren!_ Oh my god, it is you! Is this where you’ve been? You face is all over the—”

In a number of terrified seconds, I manage to whirl around, cross the two meter or so space between the sinks and the hand dryer, and cover his mouth with a semi-wet hand. Baby blue eyes bright and hair as blonde as ever, he hasn’t changed a bit since I last saw him.

“Armin,” I hiss in a frantic whisper, unable to think of anything beyond the fact that if I don’t sort this out right now, the life Levi and I are so close to achieving will become nothing more than a long-dead dream to be mourned and then forgotten. A dusty drawing, framed but covered in dust, abandoned on a shelf that we spare agonised glances when we’re suffocating in the lives others have moulded for us because it represents everything we wish we could have been, but lost our chance to be long ago. “Please don’t say anymore. Fuck, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to see me! No one was supposed to find me.” I barely manage to twist _‘find us’_ into _‘find me’_ at the last second, but I do. Chances are he doesn’t know about Levi yet. Unless… Unless he’s not alone either. “Oh god, Armin, is Mikasa here? In Richmond?” 

With an alarmed nod of his head, my hand slips from his face in favour of running through my hair and tugging on the messy strands hard enough to make my head ache. I’m all of a sudden incredibly aware of the silver band around my ring finger, and the metal feels like ice against my skin. “Fuck. Fuck! _Fuck!_ Is she here? At the park?” The words are a mantra; I’m quickly slipping off the edge of calm and into hysteria.

“No, I forced her to take a break from _looking for you!_ She should be out getting coffee on the other side of town! What’s going on, Eren? Why don’t you want Mikasa to know about you being here? They say you were kidnapped! Are you in some kind of trouble?” He’s whispering too now. Harsh, desperate sounds that some part of me I knew I could never leave behind in New York is already rearing to placate into something less distressed. But he doesn’t try to run. The relief that hits when I realise that is so astounding my legs shake with the weight of it.

“I wasn’t kidnapped. I… I ran away, Armin.” I sigh, staring at him with what I hope is a forlorn expression (rather than a regretful one. The last thing I need is for him to think I regret my decision. Considering it is one of the rare decisions I’ve made in my life that were entirely mine, it is one of the few things I’ve done that I _don’t regret)_ , torn between being resigned and petrified as the confession slips from my tongue. 

“You… you ran away?!” he splutters, wide eyes asking so many questions that I likely won’t ever be able to answer without risking the security of the future that I was desperate enough to run away for. “Eren, do you have any idea what Mika and your mom have been going through?! They’ve spent the last few days searching for you like crazy! Your dad even has private investigators scouring the country for you!”

He’s angry and confused. Furious, even. And he has every right to be. But I can barely comprehend his animosity for how my blood has gone cold from the fear that’s speared me in the gut. I knew he would hire private investigators. Ever the charitable philanthropist and loving father in the eyes of the media, I fucking knew he would. I can imagine him sitting opposite a journalist on a cushy sofa in an interview while he simultaneously over exaggerates his love for me (even that’s a lie as it implies that he has any love for me at all) and calls out every other parent by stating what kind of father would he be if he _didn’t_ hire the best investigators and detectives to find his beloved son?

Shaking my head side to side frantically to expel the thoughts from my head, I reach blindly for Armin’s wrist with my right hand. When I have it in my hold, my fingers overlapping because of how thin his arms are, I squeeze it lightly, desperate for him not to choose to run in a fit of ire. His pulse is the beat of a hummingbird’s wings beneath his skin. 

“I know! And I know it was a selfish thing to do, and that I should have said something about it to you guys! But I was suffocating, Armin! I couldn’t live like that forever, and I certainly couldn’t have gone into medicine. Not after what happened when we found ‘Kasa. So I got out. I got out before people started wondering why I hadn’t started applying for universities and scholarships like everyone else, and while I _finally_ had the opportunity to avoid being trapped in a life I could never be happy living.”

I’m crying, I realise with a start, my cheeks hot and vision blurring. I try to repress the jagged sobs raring to be released in the back of my throat, but doing so just makes my chest constrict even further, tight from both anxiety and a lack of air. It’s no use. My efforts are futile. There is too much on the line, and I can’t believe we got so far without any trouble only for things to end up here.

“Oh, Eren.” The anger in his voice sounds close to evaporating entirely, but the pity that has made a sudden appearance stings. Never in my life did I think Armin would be one to pity me, and yet here we are. Nonetheless, his pity summons an absurd amount of hope within me.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I swear, scrubbing at the wet planes of my face with my sleeve as frantically as Levi does every surface he spots a noticeable speck of dirt on. The gesture is half a last attempt to appeal to his sympathetic nature with vulnerability—an incredibly rare trait for me to express at all—and half me being, much to my humiliation, completely unable to stop my tears. “Just please, Armin, don’t tell anyone you found me here! Tell them I left on my own accord if you have to, but please don’t let them know where I am.” This is as close to begging as I’ve ever been, but I couldn’t care less. I’m beyond desperate at this point to get out of this and back to the relative safety of Levi and the Subaru without there being a chance my family could learn of my whereabouts. 

The pity fades a bit as his wide eyes narrow, watery blue freezing over with an analytical coldness. It's sudden appearance in his gaze doesn't surprise me; I can't name the number of times I've witnessed him use his brilliant intelligence to his advantage. It's why my father approved of our friendship so much—encouraged it even. When necessary, his icy logic can be unexpectedly cruel. But seeing it now terrifies me anew, because this time it's me who's on the receiving end of it.

More than a few minutes pass without him saying anything. I'm scared Levi will get sick of wondering what is taking me so long and come and investigate himself. But I'm equally as terrified of speaking in case my saying something will make Armin decide to turn me in that much faster. Either option will bring the abrupt end to everything.

"Okay." It's a hesitant one-word statement spoken so quietly I almost don't catch it. Yet in my head, it echoes off the chipped concrete walls so loud my ears ring with relief.

"Okay?"

"Okay," he affirms, twisting his wrist out of my grip only to squeeze my hand gently. "Just… when you can… contact me. Contact _your mom_ and _your sister_. Don't keep them—keep me—worrying about you, okay? You'll find a way, I'm sure. Promise me that, and I won't say anything."

"I don't know if I can promise that, Armin. Isn't it better to let them think I was taken—let them mourn for me—than have them know I made the decision to leave myself?"

His reaction is instantaneous, and he shakes his head frantically, chewed nail beds suddenly biting into the centre of my palm. "No, Eren, it's not. You haven't seen how torn up Mikasa has been! How upset your mother is! Just please do it. Trust me. It's better for them—and for me—if you let us know you're okay once and a while."

The desperation in his eyes couldn't be more obvious. I wonder if I look the same?

Nodding slowly, more to myself than to him, I envelope him in a tight embrace, clutching tightly at the back of his shirt, my hands clenched into fists against his ribcage. Contact. I'm sure I can manage that. With a burner phone maybe? In the very least, I can try. Both for the sake of my family, Armin included, and this new life of mine with Levi.

"I will try. I promise, Armin, I will try."

He hugs me just as tight in return, but draws back almost too soon, his features set in the familiar all-knowing expression I've associated with him since he skipped two years of high school and graduated with Mikasa rather than with me. "I know you will. And I'll be waiting to hear from you. Now hurry and get out of here before your sister meets me here in ten."

And with one last smile, brittle where my panic wears my gratefulness down into a grimace, and a final squeeze of his hand, my eyes stinging with a new round of tears, I do.

Blotchy-faced and red-eyed, I walk straight past the Subaru with my head down, my gaze trained resolutely on the ground beneath my feet. I don’t dare spare it or Levi a single glance. As much as I trust Armin to try and keep this, his run in with me, a secret, I don’t trust his ability to keep secrets—especially not one of this calibre—from Mikasa. If Levi and I want to have any chance at reaching New Orleans without getting caught, we need to leave subtly without giving any impression that we’re travelling together, and we need to leave now. 

In the corner of my eye, I catch Levi look up at me as I pass, but I force myself to keep walking towards the exit of the car park. I have no doubt he’s noticed something is wrong. Despite my efforts to hide it, I’m almost certain my panic is displayed as plain as day on my features, and I know for sure that my face will tell him I’ve been crying, regardless of how I’m trying to hide it. His eyes are on me for a second or two before he looks away again. The only signs that he’s aware that we’re in trouble is that his hands tighten around the steering wheel, and he immediately starts the car, pretending to fiddle with the radio a bit before reversing and driving out of the park while nodding his head to a song I know isn’t really playing. The Subaru rolls past, and I refrain from racing after it, instead determinedly not letting my gaze trail away from the direction I’m wandering in. While I’m not good with panic, I can do determination like no one else. And I am incomparably determined to get us out of the precarious situation I’ve gotten us into.

We meet up at the Redi Mart just up the street. I slide into the back seat with shaky hands and lie down across all of them. With my body curled inwards, my face is hidden from view should anybody look in through the windows from the side of the street.

But I’m not taking any chances.

“Drive!” I rasp through clenched teeth, one hand gripping the material of my hoodie over my heart. I sound as distressed as I feel, desperation drenching my voice “And pass me my glasses. We need to get out of Richmond now! Be quick but discreet.”

Wisely, he tosses the Ray-Bans into the back immediately and without a word, and I fumble with them before managing to shove them onto my face, listening intently as the car revs to a hasty start. Barely a minute passes before we’re on the road again.

“Fucking hell, Eren, you’re shaking! What happened?” He doesn’t sound like he’s panicking, but there is a harsh edge to his voice that grates on my conscience as badly as asphalt can skin your palms when you fall. And he used my name. He rarely ever calls me by my name. 

“Ran into an old friend. They recognised me, but they’re not the problem. My sister is here, too.” Mikasa is here. Mikasa, who knows all about my living by lists and my burning desire for all things beyond the life my father had planned for me, and who will feel so fucking betrayed at my leaving without her despite her being happy living where she was. Of all the people for us to possibly run into now, it had to be her and Armin. “Fuck, Levi, if she learns we’re here, she’ll comb this place and every other town in a fifty mile radius trying to find me! I don’t think Armin saw the car, or noticed the ring, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m traveling alone, but on the off chance he did—”

“So we ditch the car as soon as possible, keep to the back roads and don’t risk stopping in Memphis,” he says assuredly, tone firm and steady as he cuts me off. “We can get a burner phone somewhere to keep an eye on things if we need. But we’re gonna be okay. We have new identities that they don’t know about, and we can lie low in New Orleans for as long as we need. I have a bit of mechanical knowledge stored up from before Kenny found me and made me his heir, so I can get a job fixing boat motors or something along the bayou and you can write those incredibly fucking detailed lists of yours on what parts are needed, and we can live out of the way in a boat shack. We’re gonna be okay and we’re gonna make it, Bright Eyes. We’re already so close. One little incident isn't going to get the best of us."

Although I can’t see his face, I know the exact expression he’ll be wearing now. Eyes staring resolutely out the windscreen, focused on the road but on high alert for any sign that our presence here has been recognised as anything more than just another vehicle passing through. Pale mouth quirked in a firm frown that reads of unwavering determination. There’ll be a crease between his brows that chants _we’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it_ , and just picturing it has me releasing my shirt from my grip, because if we mean any of the things we’ve said and done in the last two and a half weeks, we’re gonna make it. We have to.

“Eren?”

“Okay.”

A faint rumble of approval sounds from the front seat.

_“Okay.”_

While all previous plans we had to stop over in Memphis for a night have been scrapped, we do risk stopping at the first used car dealership we find after we're safe out of Richmond by a few hours. It's close to five, and they're right on closing time when we arrive, but the middle-aged woman chewing enthusiastically on a wad of gum as she fumbles to lock the door must see the desperation in our eyes because she lets us hawk the Subaru for a black 1998 Honda Civic hatchback with faulty air conditioning without any fuss. She warns us that it will be a nightmare to drive come summer after quickly explaining its ownership history. We tell her that where we’re going, that might be a good thing—plant the idea that the two young men of our descriptions who came through here are heading someplace cold. Although, it doesn't matter too much what she thinks; we'll trade the Civic for another car tomorrow, and then again after that. Within twenty minutes, we’re on the road again with only the thought to get as close to New Orleans as our tired bodies can manage before we’re forced to pull into a motel.

 _"Be safe"_ , the woman had said as we went to depart, heavy hands busied with pulling another stick of gum from the pocket of her overalls. _"Be well. Be happy. The world offers no guarantees beyond being young once, so don't waste it."_

We could only stare, surprised by her sudden philosophical outburst, and then briefly nod our thanks. Neither of us had the heart to tell her we're only here because we've already wasted most of our youth. This is our final attempt to regain some of the time we lost to having grown up too fast.

Just under an hour later, we’re passing the sign saying _'welcome to Oxford, Mississippi'_. We're both exhausted, unable to help yawning every few minutes even with anxiety and paranoia keeping our eyes pried open. Having told Levi about Armin’s terms the second we were out of Richmond, I've spent most of the seven and a half hour journey scribbling back up plans if the one we're following now fails, but by the time we enter Oxford, I can barely make out the words I’ve written or even read my own handwriting. Levi is the first one to suggest we get some much needed sleep, his grey eyes hooded and bloodshot with exhaustion. Already falling asleep in the passenger seat beside him myself, the gravelly quality to his voice as he mutters, _"before we end up wrapped around a telephone pole"_ , is all the encouragement I need to agree.

He manages to drive us in one piece across town to a dingy motel bordering on being rural where it sits on the very edge of the urban neighborhood. The car park isn't empty, with a busted red Chevy holding up close to the reception building and a Corolla beside it, this one several models older than the one I had when attending St. Albans before we hawked it back in Baltimore. But by the time we pull into the lot and park as far from the other vehicles as we can, it's well past eleven p.m. and the whole area is devoid of anyone else still awake. Shuffling into the reception with our bags slung over our hunched shoulders, we're the only ones crazy enough to be out at this hour.

We pay cash over the counter again, only this time we go for the honeymoon suite rather than a simple double room, playing the tired just-married couple without even having to try. It's a bit more expensive, but if my sister or my father or anyone else for that matter somehow manages to track us here, the honeymoon suite is the last place they'd think to look. This way we can in the very least sleep a little easier.

The bathroom is a bonus, too. As soon as we've locked the bedroom door and checked it twice, we set our possessions down on the tiled floor and immediately get to filling the two-person bathtub. Ten minutes pass, and then I’m rubbing a bar of soap that smells like milk and honey over Levi's aching shoulders as we sit together in the scalding water, both of us trying to relax despite straining to hear if any more cars turn into the motel car park over the whir of the bathroom fan. We're in there for almost an hour, relishing the feeling of being scrubbed clean and the close company of each other as we share a cigarette and soft, intimate touches between us. It's grounding as it reminds us of what awaits us at the end of all of this—reminds us of why we're doing this in the first place. Sure, at the start it was about escaping our lives before we were trapped by the burdensome weight of the futures they entailed. And it still is about that, only now it's become so much more. Now we're also running to preserve this new life we've built together.

“What do you think it’ll be like? Living together and not on the run,” I ask later, when the digital clock resting on the bedside table reads one thirteen a.m. and we’re lying together beneath the dusty-smelling sheets. 

“Super fucking domestic,” he murmurs, pressing his bare back more snugly against my front so that our bodies are fitted more closely together, and I laugh into his hair. “Almost like how things were before, only we won’t be sneaking around anymore. And we won’t have separate apartments halfway across town from each other anymore either. I’ll still complain when you don’t wash the dishes properly—”

I snort at that one, tightening my hold around his small frame as another yawn threatens to break past my lips.

“Brat,” he drawls, voice thick with fatigue. “You know it’s true. You’ll still get mad at me when I’m being an insensitive prick, and call me out on it. And we’ll still work around each other’s compulsions without judgement. You can write detailed grocery lists and whatever’s on your mind that you want me to know but don’t feel you can say aloud, and I’ll obsessively clean wherever we’re living from top to bottom whenever I’m upset and you won’t give me shit for it. We’ll probably spend every night like this, just not in a shitty motel room, and without this fucking fear constantly eating away at us.” 

He pauses, the silence between us lasting several long minutes, before whispering right when I think he’s fallen asleep—when I’m falling asleep myself, “I think it will be relieving. So much effort spent living beforehand, spent getting there… To finally live like that will be a relief.”

We wake sometime around six the next morning. Neither of us are paying close attention to the clock, our focus primarily divided between immediately getting ready to go, watching for any abnormalities in the traffic through the gaps in the blinds and recalibrating our plan to work around our recent mishap.

New Orleans is still our end goal. Being as big, as multicultural, and as festive as it is, we'll be able to hide in the unique crowds our families have never been interested in being involved with. It's also not the obvious choice for teenage runaways like ourselves. It doesn't have the reputation Vegas and California have for fresh starts, young love and rebellion, and yet, if shit does hit the fan, we can easily blow the rest of our money on a boat and take the ocean route to Mexico if we have to. I wrote as such in my notebook the night before.

Tugging on new, clean clothes, we pour over the pages. Levi points out flaws in some of my propositions while tugging a long sleeve shirt over his head, and I'll either suggest a solution or another plan entirely in reply as I struggle to pull my skinny jeans on. We’ve always been careful, but before my run in with Armin, I’ll admit we were becoming a little complacent. Now, we’re back to being as precautious as we were when we were first planning to leave New York. Nothing is left to chance, and since I've been seen in Kentucky, we’re twice as wary of coming across roadblocks as before.

"Not knowing what they're up to… If they're close to finding us or if they're way off… _Fuck, I hate it_. It's driving me insane thinking they could be on our trail and we won't know until they're right on top of us," Levi curses through gritted teeth as we pack away our stuff—including some of the motel's spare soap and shampoo we filched from the cupboard under the bathroom sink (saves us from having to buy any ourselves for a while later on). Then quieter, barely a whisper, yet deafening with the implications behind his words: "If it's Kenny who finds us before we realise, I don't know if we'll get away again. At least not in one piece." 

The prospect terrifies him—terrifies the both of us. We’ve placed so much regard on the life we’ll have once we’re in a position to settle safely. To lose it now, after we’ve both thrown all of ourselves and our effort into reaching it, would likely cripple us beyond measure. I may have dealt with depression in the past and had my compulsions be a consistent aspect of my life since my early teens, but if this doesn’t work out and we are caught, I’m certain things will reach a whole new level of ‘bad’ I’ve never experienced before. I can only imagine how it would affect Levi, but I don’t think he’d feel much different. To be defeated so far into the game would crush the both of us, leaving us to live the rest of our miserable lives caught in a never ending series of _what ifs_. But despite how much we loathe to think of it, in light of recent events, it's a possibility we have to be prepared for.

"Like you said before, let's get a burner phone just to keep an eye on things. That way we can know where any roadblocks are, and what states they're focusing their search in," I reassure him as he reassured me just yesterday. We build each other up when we start to tear ourselves down, with this, our compulsions and otherwise. It’s how we could go through with this, running away together, in the first place, and can continue to live this way until the day we don’t have to. “If they have an appliance store here, we’ll get one here. If not, we’ll get one in the next bigger city we drive through. For now, let’s just focus on changing our hair again, and getting rid of the Civic. If they don’t immediately recognise us, and we do happen to find ourselves at a roadblock, we still might be able to get away.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs under his breath, knuckles bone-white where they grip his bag by the strap. There’s a rather disjointed quality to his voice that bothers me more than I’d like, and his silver irises are dazed, glazed over with as much uncertainty as they are with the early morning light filtering through the blinds. The sudden lack of resolve doesn’t suit the keenness of his features—doesn’t fit his character and all the honed edges I know lie razor-sharp beneath his pale skin. Standing riddled with such brutal hesitation at the bedside, he looks worlds away from the assertive school prefect who approached me two weeks from his graduation with a smirk and his shirt unbuttoned. 

Unsettled by the sudden subtle change in his demeanour, I reach for him, fingers curling tightly around the nape of his neck in a way that I hope will ground him where last night’s stability has worn off. “What was it you first said to me, in our spot in the library? The year’s almost over?” At his confused nod, I continue relentlessly. I’ll be damned if I let his resolve waver now. Not after he’s just repaired mine. “Well this trip is almost over, too. It’s like you said, one little incident isn't going to get the best of us. We’re gonna make it, Levi. _We’re gonna make it_.”

Winding my free arm around his narrow waist, I duck down to press my forehead against his, fitting the lines of our noses together so that we’re sharing mint toothpaste-tinted breathes. 

“Love, come run away with me?”

It’s not quite the same as what I said all those days ago in our little library alcove, but then a lot of things have changed since then. We’re a little different; more weary and more determined than ever to live how we want now that we’ve actively left New York behind us. We’re older in a way, too, with all of these new experiences under our belts, and yet I can’t recall a time when I have felt more young and alive than I do now. But the essence of the phrase remains the same. It still means the same as it did before, only now we’ve had a taste of freedom, and couldn’t be more hell-bent to keep living this way if we tried. Back then, it kick started us into action, and within two weeks, we were gone. Here and now, it does the same thing, just as I’d hoped.

Levi’s tired eyes light up at hearing the familiar words, and barely half a second passes before he arches a thin brow and quirks his lips into the same sly smirk he wore when I first asked him to run away with me. “Only if _you_ run away with _me_ , Bright Eyes.”

We don’t linger too long in the motel room after that. After discreetly checking the car park from the reception desk as we return the key and toss our bags into the backseat of the Civic, I slide into the driver’s seat in time to watch Levi gracefully clamber into the passenger side. When I lean over the centre console to kiss him, he meets me halfway, mouth hot and hungry and passionate against mine as he draws me in closer by the hand twisted in my hair. I go willingly, breathing him in as if I were a drowning man and he is the air I need to survive. He doesn’t smell like tea leaves anymore. Or cleaning products (much to his disgust, I’m sure). Rather the fragrance of the milk and honey soap from our bath last night lingers on his skin, and at some point between Winchester and here, our scents must have combined because he smells a little like me, and a little like himself; a heady mix of morning musk, nicotine, old vehicle smell and something distinctly us. Considering how our every moment is spent in each other’s company, I probably smell a little like him too. It’s not surprising, and as Levi’s deft fingers curl possessively around my hip bone through my jeans, I find I quite like it.

He draws back before long, lips ghosting lovingly over the line of my jaw as he pulls away. “C’mon, Brat,” he teases, his tone lilting fondly as he grins slyly and he raises a hand to pat down my locks where—I realise as I spare myself a glance in the rear-view mirror—he has tousled them to the point where I look like I’ve just been grabbed by eager hands for a quickie before making it out the door of our motel room and to the car. Seeing it has me mirroring his grin without hesitation; it would seem he’s returned to himself after our earlier reconciliation with the line that brought us together in the first place. “Let’s get going. We’ll have plenty of time for that when we get to New Orleans.”

“I can’t wait,” I huff, but where my reply should be dryly indulgent, it is only positively relieved, and as we drive out of the motel car park towards the centre of Oxford, I feel oddly content despite where in life we’ve found ourselves.

Finally on the road, our first stop is a convenience store. We need more food—for both the journey ahead and for breakfast because neither us are willing to risk a diner or café at this point, and because we need to dye our hair again. Armin has seen my current appearance—has possibly seen Levi's as well, and I have few doubts that Mikasa will have already intimidated the details of everyone who was at Lake Reba Park at the same time as I was out of him. Keeping the hair colours we have now is not a chance I'm willing to take.

Levi orders two large coffees at the counter—both double shot, because we need as much caffeine as we can get at this point if we want to make the final stretch running on as little sleep as we are now—before retreating to my side in the aisle where the few hair products they stock are located, a small basket in hand.

“What should we go with this time?” I ask him as I scan the shelves, not reading the brands or the writing on the boxes so much as assuming the dye colour by the hair of the women with plastic smiles on the front. “Platinum blond maybe? I mean, you might look like Draco Malfoy if he was five-foot-two and had an undercut, but it would be an unexpected change.”

He scowls, and cuffs me gently around the back of the head. “Brat,” he mutters as I try to smother my fond laughter and mantra of _‘sorry, sorry, sorry’_ with a hand, wisely choosing not to mention that by standing on his tip-toes just now to smack me illustrates my point. I’m cautious being loud too—the last thing we need is to cause a scene and become a lasting memory in someone’s mind as a result. But I’m hoping that by acting like this, how we normally act together, we’ll just look like a couple of care-free teenagers going through a phase of dyeing our hair. 

“I don’t particularly care. It’ll grow back black eventually.” He shrugs nonchalantly once I’ve calmed myself, running a hand through his hair, thin fingers absently scratching at his undercut.

“Touché,” I murmur in response, because he’s right. No matter how much we change our appearances now, eventually we can still look as we did before all of this. We may look more grown up, and perhaps more carefree than ever, but in time, we can return to how we appeared when we first crossed paths. 

Using one hand, I knock what we need from the shelf into our basket. 

Cruising through the aisles while still on high alert, we add some more packets of crisps and another box of granola bars in next to the boxes of hair bleach, developer and toner. Neither of us are too keen to stop for anything but fuel, hawking the Civic for another vehicle, and getting a burner phone now, so we buy enough snack food to last us to New Orleans. Minus the granola, none of it is very healthy, but we figure we can worry about that later. For now, we have much bigger things to concern ourselves with.

Getting rid of the car is one of them. Once Levi collects our coffees and we pay the young barista behind the till for our hoard (he sees the matching rings we wear and gives the pair of us a nasty sneer as I go to hand over the cash we owe. _Fags_ , is the word he hisses as we turn to leave, and Levi’s spine is as rigid as mine as we exit the building without responding to his jest. But rude people are easily more memorable than those who are apathetic, and in no way is he worth jeopardizing our new lives over), we hurry back to Civic fast enough for my coffee to spill over the lip of my cup and head straight for where we saw a used car dealership on the way into Oxford, eager to leave this town behind. 

We trade it for a little, red, 2000s model Ford Fiesta, paying a little extra on top of the Civic in order to get it instead of the rusted Holden Commodore also on offer. It runs a treat, with working air conditioning and a brilliant heater should we need it, while also being small and nondescript enough for us to nip quickly through the streets to the appliance store. 

Levi goes into the building alone, leaving me to act as lookout in the driver’s seat, before returning less than ten minutes later with a second hand android smartphone that has a convenient crack right through the front-facing camera. We dally about in the parking lot, connecting to the store’s free wifi and immediately checking the web for any information on our disappearances. There’s a video of my parents seated beside each other as they ask America to come forward if they have any information on me, their missing son, my father stoic next to the image of my distraught mother. Seeing her so upset is heart-wrenching, and I’m sudden reminded of my promise to Armin. I haven’t even made an attempt to contact him yet, but for now at least he seems to have managed to keep news of his run in with me either a complete secret or confined to only the knowledge of him and Mikasa. There isn’t too much on Levi’s disappearance. Only an article or two about how the heir of Ackerman Enterprises has supposedly gone AWOL. But Levi doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest. He scowls ferociously at the lack of results displayed on the screen, and remarks that there is so little on the subject because his uncle would have taken matters into his own hands.

“He’ll know I’ve run off. Not only did we sell the Benz, but I have enough experience with dealing with corrupt bastards that I would never let myself get into a kidnapping situation without putting up a decent fight.” He shrugs, taking a long draught of his steaming black coffee. “Besides, I never exactly hid the fact that I hated being his heir. Sure, it was better than starving through each month, but I was more free living on the streets than I was waking up each morning in a mansion with more money in my pocket than I knew what to do with. He’ll wanna keep things on the down low so that he can catch me unawares himself. Unfortunately for him, your parents haven’t exactly been quiet about the details of the investigation, so we know they’re still focusing the search on New York and Pennsylvania.”

“Until they learn that I was in Richmond. Armin’s smart, but my sister… She’s rigorous with her questioning when she wants to know something, and she’ll be desperate. I’m not sure if he'll be able to keep seeing me at Lake Reba from her for very long. Chances are, she already knows.”

He sets his coffee down in the cup holder on the side of his door, the movement a forward statement on its own. “Let’s get going now then. If your friend does talk, then it will do us a shit ton of good to be as close to New Orleans as possible. Even more so if we’re relatively settled. That way we can lay low if we have to. Although,” he pauses, dark stare contemplative as he analyses the information on the phone screen a second time, “it’s probably best if we lay low for a while regardless. We have enough cash to make do with the bare minimum until all things us-related in the media die down a bit.”

I give my answer by jamming the key into the ignition, wincing at the sight of the packets of junk food littering the back seat. “So long as we’re eating better food then. Potato chips are great and all, but I’m cringing thinking just how unhealthy it is living off of them like we are now.”

He laughs as we pull out of the park, on the move again. “That’s a given, Love.”

We bleach our hair at the next motel. It’s a cheap roadside outfit off the highway in Gonzales, Louisiana, very similar to the first motel we stayed at back in West Virginia. The neon sign is also missing letters so that the name appears to be composed of too many consonants to make sense, and the electric blue light flickers inconsistently in a way that suggests the wires powering the thing are faulty. It, too, appears more dilapidated than should be allowed for an operating place of accommodation, but we’re not picky; we’re only to be there for a night. New Orleans is less than an hour away. We’ll change our hair, work out any remaining kinks in our plan, maybe look into places up for sale in New Orleans, and then come morning, it’ll be as if we were never even there.

I read Murakami’s _Dance Dance Dance_ aloud as Levi paints the box bleach-developer mixture through my locks, stopping only when I have to wash the concoction from my hair and pause to listen to his running commentary on the story. Levi is, to my delight, also an avid Murakami reader. Once he’s brushed toner through my hair and I’ve showered a second time to wash it out, he reads from where I left off as I start the dyeing process with his hair. By the time we finish up in the bathroom, we’ve made it about a third the way through the book.

“That’s one way to serenade our new lives, don’t you think?” I remark as I watch him towel dry his now silvery blond hair, rivulets of water trailing down the pale expanse of his toned chest and stomach. Beneath the stuttering bathroom light, the lighter shade paired with his quicksilver irises makes him look almost ethereal. I refrain from making a comment, though, the small, private tilt of my mouth hopefully all that might give away the direction of my thoughts. I don’t think for a second Levi would appreciate being compared to a fairy or anything of the sort in the slightest.

“Well, it’s certainly something else,” he hums, folding the towel and setting it down neatly on the cramped vanity. “It’s very us, though. What about this runaway relationship has been normal so far?” He reaches out to me, one of his arms curling snugly around my waist, and tugs me gently towards him. My back is to him so he kisses between my shoulder blades.

“Not a lot,” I snort in response, covering the hand of his that rests lightly on the curve of my hip with one of my own as I lean back into his embrace. “But it’s been good. For all the shit we’ve had to plough through, I think we’ve done pretty fucking well at doing the whole dating thing on the run.”

He lets loose a rumbling laugh, the sound reverberating through my skin, and slackens his grip enough for me to twist around in his hold. “Is that what this is? Dating?”

Now facing the right way to survey his features, I do, pressing my body flush against his until his bare back is pressed up against the steamy glass of the shower wall. “I think it’s whatever we want it to be. Dating doesn’t quite fit, but it’s close enough. All I know is that I feel free whenever you’re in front of me and I love you like I’ve never loved anyone else for it.”

His gaze warms considerably at hearing this. Along with the fluttery light from above, it softens his features. His whetted cheekbones no longer seem sharp enough for me to cut myself on, the faint shadows they cast on the soft, hairless skin of his cheeks no longer as harsh as before. Without the scowl that sometimes seems permanent on his features, the thinness of his lips makes them seem delicate rather than sour, and for a troublesome moment, he almost looks as though he hasn’t struggled as much through life as I know he has. 

“Same here, Bright Eyes,” he murmurs, reverently, stretching upwards to kiss me firmly on the mouth. “Same here.”

Nothing is planned any further until the morning. After my confession of sorts shared in the boxy motel bathroom, we got carried away. With all the stress brought about by the fact that we’re about to embark on the tail end of our journey across the states weighing heavily on us, tension was building and so last night was spent relieving what we could with fervent touches, the pair of us reveling in our blatant attachment to each other and all it embodies. 

I wake at six a.m., now accustomed to starting my days before most of the world, groggy and a little disorientated. My body is bare beneath the sheets and my hips ache, but I am warm and beautifully content feeling where Levi’s forehead, still slightly damp with perspiration from last night’s activities, rests against the space between my collarbones, and where our legs are tangled together. He is still asleep, limbs tense as if ready to spring into action even when he’s tucked cosily into my side, his small huffs of breath hot against my chest. But I find I don’t dread waking him up the same today. Not when today is the day we finally, _finally_ get to kick start out new lives in New Orleans.

Ducking down to brush my lips over the crown of his head, I whisper, “Wake up, Love,” against his hair. 

His entire body twitches, his muscles coiling even tighter as he rises to consciousness in a split second.

“Hey,” I murmur. “It’s just me.”

“Eren?” There’s so much vulnerability and naked trust contained in that single word—in my name—that my chest suddenly feels like an overflowing cup, overwhelming emotion spilling over the edges in abundance. I know better than to comment on it aloud. Although, there’s nothing I can do to prevent what I say next from coming out softer than imaginable.

“Who else?”

He snorts, rolling his eyes—a response that I have come to associate consistently with Levi’s character, before he tilts his head upwards and strains his neck to claim my lips in a feverish kiss. I melt into him—or maybe it’s him who’s melting into me. Perhaps, it’s both of us, for I can no longer tell where I end and he begins. My heart is splitting down its seam, as loud as distant thunder beneath our harsh gasps of breath, and my hands are grasping at his ribcage and narrow shoulders for better purchase as his fingers stretch behind me to dig into my nape. His tongue traces the outline of my lips, and morning breath be damned, I kiss him harder. Every graze of his skin against mine is an exclamation of all the anticipation and the _relief_ and the _fucking triumph_ we share for having made it this far—this close to our end goal; the end of Dr Grisha Jaeger’s prodigal son and Ackerman Enterprises’ genius heir, and the beginning of Eren and Levi, the two of us free from labels, our families and the world we used to know—and I wonder if this is what every morning should taste like?

“Brat,” he says, breathless and adoring, once he pulls away, his voice still faintly gravely with exhaustion. And then with his silver eyes blazing with unrefined rapture from where they stare intensely directly into mine, he sighs, as happy as I have ever seen him, “Today’s the day.”

I grin, relishing the ache in my cheeks that springs forward with the size of the gesture. “‘Today’s the day.” 

His lips part as if he’s about to say something else, but before he does, his face screws up suddenly, his nose wrinkling cutely as the corners of his eager eyes crinkle in disgust. “Before we go anywhere, we both _have_ to shower.”

I just laugh good-naturedly, already rolling out of the bed and towards the bathroom.

We shower together, laying out our plan for once we’re in New Orleans beneath the spray as we rub obscene amounts of conditioner into each other’s newly dyed hair. We’ll hawk the Fiesta here, in Gonzales, and settle on a permanent vehicle. Nothing too flash—not while we’re still technically hiding in plain sight, and something reliable ( _our car_ , rather than a disposable set of wheels). With our budget and the delicate matter of our identities, the last thing we need is to be paying frequent visits to a mechanic. We’ll also look around for places up for sale until we find somewhere that suits. We’re not picky, we can’t really afford to be, and after spending the last few nights in shitty motel rooms, we don’t really care. As long as we can find somewhere out of the way and public view—somewhere where we’re a little disconnected from society, but can conjoin at any given time should we desire to do so, we can make do. Employment will come last, but we’ll keep a fixed eye out for places that need workers and have jobs available during the search for a home of our own. Until we have either of the latter sorted, we’ll either sleep in our car, or find another cheap motel to stay at.

When we’re out of the shower, and have dried our hair as well as we can be bothered to, we dress in clothes least likely to be associated with a conglomerate heir and the son of a decorated doctor, and pack what’s left of the hair products we used away into our bags. An hour has passed since we first woke by the time we leave the motel room, the sheets left in the disarray they ended up in the night before. Levi’s wearing a snug, long sleeve black top and his black ripped jeans that are so ridiculously tight they should be illegal (his ass looks incredible in them and if the fact that he’s walking a little ahead of me is anything to go by, he’s definitely aware of it), while I’ve made do with my white _The 1975_ band shirt and black jeans that match his in every way except for where I’ve cuffed them at the ankles. We look young and unbothered—like our greatest worries are no more and no less than paying the rent on time and keeping up a social life between work hours and studying at a university. Not keeping our true identities a fiercely guarded secret and hiding away from our families and anyone else on the hunt to find us.

Levi slides into the driver's seat as I prop our bags up in the back. The little car revs to life the second he twists the key in the ignition, and when I join him in the front, pen and treasured notebook in hand, he already has the handbrake disengaged. We’re off at the click of my seatbelt, more eager to get on the road than we have been since we high-tailed it out of New York. Perhaps, even more so now than then. We were desperate that day, sitting in the cab of my old Corolla with the ominous sight of St. Albans gradually disappearing in the rearview mirror—desperate and terrified that we would find ourselves caught before we managed to even leave the state. Today, as we drive to the used car dealership we passed on our way through town yesterday, we’re enthused, indescribably exhilarated by the thought that by lunch time, we’ll have arrived in the place we’ll be calling home for the foreseeable future.

We’re the first customers at the used car place. They’ve only just opened, and the white-haired man behind the front desk yells out for his nephew to come and show us what they have on offer. His nephew is a shrill blond, loud in both presence and volume, who leads us out of the shop still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, but describes every vehicle he shows us enthusiastically through his yawns. He’s gesturing passionately at a little navy blue 1996 Toyota Corsa when he catches sight of our rings.

“You two married then?” he asks brightly with a smile so wide I can see his top row of teeth, stark white against the deep tan of his skin.

Levi’s eyes narrow at his brazen curiosity, but I elbow him lightly in the ribs, nodding at the blond and returning his smile. Here and whenever we are in the company of others elsewhere, we are Aaron and Henrí Petit, a happily and openly just-married couple. If we’re remembered that way by this stranger, then the risk of us being traced to New Orleans will be delightfully lower.

“Newlyweds, actually. We just got married about a week and a half ago,” I reply, thinking of when Levi’s cherry-haired acquaintance, Hanji, who came across as very mad-scientist-like even from a distance, forged our new IDs and with them, our marital status.

At hearing that, the blond positively beams at us.

“Congrats!” he exclaims, full lips somehow stretching into an ever wider grin. His big baby blue eyes are ridiculously open and expressive— _soulful_ , my mind supplies; his eyes are a lighter reflection of my own—and I wonder as I watch them turn distantly fond, irises sinking into half-hidden depths of something aching and as severe as my love for Levi, if he can see as fully into mine as I can see into his. “I’m actually planning on proposing to my boyfriend tonight. He’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but he’s great and fuck do I love him. I’m just,” he pauses, his smile turning sheepish as he scratches absently at the back of his neck, “so damn nervous, you know? You got any pointers?”

“Ah…” I come up short of things to say once I get over my mild shock (with that ruddy baby face of his, I didn’t think he was much older than us! So young and already planning his engagement. Although, I suppose neither Levi or I can say anything in that regard considering we ran away together. Hell, we didn’t even know each other when I first asked him), shifting my gaze to where Levi stands stoically at my side. We never actually got engaged—or got married even! There was no proposal. No wedding. No post-marital jitters. Just the two of us and the shared ferocious need to escape the lives we’d been given. Although our asking each other to run away together was as good of a proposal as any to us, I wouldn’t have any idea where to begin with _normal_ proposals.

Thankfully, he’s quick to backtrack. “Ah, shit, sorry! You’re not here to listen to me and my problems. If the old man hears me talking about myself to customers, he’ll kick my ass. Back to business. If you’re looking for something reliable, the Corsa’s good. Most Toyotas are. It drives good and it’s not too thirsty either, so if you’ll be using it to commute daily, you won’t be spending all your money on fuel each week. This one’s well-maintained and the mileage is pretty good for a used car—probably the best you’ll get from all the cars here, if I’m being honest. The air conditioning works good, too, which is a bonus. You’ll need it when summer comes. It can get hot as hell out this way this time of year.” He holds the keys out to me. “Here, did you two wanna take it for a quick test drive round the block?”

I take them with a grateful, “thanks”, and then less than ten minutes later, we’re prepped and ready to drive out of town in it, having bought the car as soon as we pulled back up in the dealership car park. 

The blond nephew follows us, collecting the keys to Fiesta, and to my surprise, Levi winds down the side window on the driver’s side to speak to him before we go. 

“Good luck with proposing, Kid. If you love him as much as you say you do, you’ll be fine.” His voice is genuine and encouraging, and I can’t help myself from reaching across the centre console to squeeze his thigh just above the knee, my features helplessly slipping into a proud grin.

The blond’s entire being lights up, his smile so bright it rivals even the blinding sun perched white-gold in the sky above. “Thank you! Shit, _thank you!_ ” he blurts zealously, and for the first time in a long while, I think that this young man could potentially be, one day, an opportunity for friendship if we stay in this state.

“No worries, Kid,” Levi replies with an amicable incline of his head, and with an enthusiastic parting wave from me, we’re off. Next stop: New Orleans.

This time, the drive is the shortest one we’ve had yet. Much shorter than even the one from Oxford to Gonzales. Barely fifty minutes, and yet the entire time we’re on Interstate 10, the inside of our Corsa is as thick with anticipation as a sauna is with steam. 

Leaving Gonzales, we were planning ahead aloud. Exchanging ideas that I’d scribble down in my notebook and refurbishing old ones that were flawed in one way or another with The Smiths playing softly alongside the roar of the highway traffic as background noise. But now we’re quiet, eyes sharp and keenly focused on looking through the windscreen where we’re eagerly awaiting the sight of the city that is to be our new home. I’m perched on the very edge of my seat, gripping my notebook as if it were my crutch. Levi is also leaning forward in his seat, his hands bone-white where they’re clenched around the steering wheel. Him and I, we’re equally as eager to _finally_ reach the end of our escape route.

Sure, we’re also both terribly aware that starting a new life here—or anywhere, for that matter—isn’t going to be as easy as we’d like. At some point, I still have to make good on my promise to Armin, and considering neither of us finished highschool, we know it will likely be difficult for us to find employment. Levi has an edge of almost a full year’s worth of education over me, but even that pales in comparison to a university degree. It will be even harder to find jobs that will take us if we don’t have a permanent place of residence and with it, an address. And even if we do find a place, that period of time where we are without work will drain us considerably of our funds the longer it lasts. For now, we can crash at a motel until we settle down in a place of our own, but even that will cost us more than we’ll be able to afford for long. And not to mention that alongside all of this, there is the issue of being teenage runaways who are actively being searched for. We’ll have to be incredibly wary of our identities and of the people who could learn the truth of who we are for, perhaps, the rest of our lives. The next few years are going to be tough, and realistically, things are going to suck more often than not, and our day-to-day life will be spent living in odd permanence together on the very edge of society. But this is what we have been racing towards these last few weeks—the dream we have _clung_ to for far longer than that. This is the life we, two kids who desperately fled our lives and those in them who would force us into moulds we could never fit into and just happened to fall in love along the way, left our world miles upon miles behind us for.

_And we’re almost there._

The sign comes into view, bright, blue and bold, and we cross into the city holding our breath. After how much we were anticipating arriving here, the sheer amount of disbelief that descends upon the both of us is startling.

“Levi,” I murmur after a while, still staring in bewilderment out the window with burning eyes. My lips quiver around his name and I sound completely and utterly floored, but I’m struggling to wrap my head around the fact that we’re here! _We’re finally fucking here_. “We… We made it.”

In the glass, I see his reflection glance at me briefly before returning his gaze to the road. His cheeks are wet, too, and through the tears catching on my lashes, I catch the small, private smile tugging at the edges of the thin white line of his mouth. It’s something meant for my eyes and my eyes only, just as this new life of ours—that is both starting now and started almost three weeks back in a tiny Catholic school library alcove in New York—is meant only for us.

“We did, Bright Eyes,” he breathes, and it’s impossible to repress the teary, ecstatic grin that arises at the choked-up, wavering quality of his voice. 

_“We did it.”_

**Epilogue - Levi's POV**

Mardi Gras brings about the realisation that New Orleans is deep asleep until it arrives. The city thrums with noise and excitement when it finally comes around, and never have the cramped streets felt _more alive_ than they do speckled with floats and crazy costumes, bursting at the seams with people and colour. It doesn't matter that the traffic is held up or that I have to work the following day or even that I can pinpoint three separate tunes playing out at full volume around us, the atmosphere is electrifying, and standing as close to the heart of celebration as we dare is exhilarating beyond words. There is nothing quite like it. 

Pressed right up against each other by the crowd, Eren and I dance as one. His warm hands ghosting over the cut of my hips, the line of my waist, the small expanse of my chest, and the planes of my face. My thin fingers caressing the softness of his cheeks, his lips, his stomach beneath the hem of his shirt, and the nape of his neck. On his long legs, his movements are adorably awkward, but that fact doesn’t stop him twirling around in my arms as best he can, cavorting with the masses surrounding us in a sea of cheer, joyous laughter, hoots of excitement, and off-beat singing.

Somewhere, not too far from us, Isabel and Farlan are dancing as well. Erwin, too. Although I haven’t seen him yet, he’ll be here. I’m sure of it. Despite having lived here most of their lives (and how difficult it still is to picture Erwin dancing. Fixing boat motors at my side in the workshop, sure. I have the image memorised right down to the grease stains he gets on his trousers when he wipes his dirty mechanic’s fingers on them. But with his cold intelligence and rather gruff manner, dancing is another story entirely), they treasure this festival as much as we do. The three of them have proved to be great friends to us in the last two and a half years. Invaluable even. They helped us settle. Erwin was the first to accept me as an employee, regardless of how none of my experience with mechanics is recorded, and both Isabel and Farlan were all too happy to welcome Eren with his compulsive organising skills as another event organiser into their small but successful, freelance business. And while they still know us as Aaron and Henrí Petit for now, I think it will be safe to tell them the truth about who we are and why we’re here—all of it—when we feel the time is right.

“Levi,” Eren’s lips are suddenly at my ear, whispering my name breathily so that only the pair of us can hear it as he shifts his hips cheekily against mine. “You still with me?”

“Cheeky Brat,” I hiss playfully in reply, thoroughly amused, arching a brow at him as he draws back a bit. And then: “Of course. Where else would I rather be?”

He laughs, loud and unrestrained, dusky pink dusting the subtle rise of his cheekbones, and I watch with blessed eyes as thread after thread of the bright festival lights sparkling all around us are caught in the reflective luminescence of his irises. His natural turquoise colour takes an elegant back seat to glowing orange, yellow, red and gold, but the knowledge that the familiar beautiful blue-green hue is responsible for the brilliant gleam is impossible to ignore. Nevertheless, I forget the fact the moment he gifts me a radiant grin unmatched in its iridescent expression of light and love. 

Before Kenny found me starving to death at eleven and I was still an orphan wasting away on the streets, happiness was not a feeling or even a word I ever thought I would associate with myself. Back then there was only hunger, desperation, and grief. _Endless, aching grief_. Even three years ago, before I noticed the brown-haired boy the year below me at St. Albans with the magnificent eyes that in all their beauty still screamed of his desire to run far, far away from the life he was living, I still found that my life as a conglomerate heir did not inspire any sense of contentment either. But here, a couple of years down the track, in the arms of this gorgeous runaway love of mine, I’m finding happiness finally fits somewhere in my life. 

We now have a house to call our own. It may only be a little one-bedroom shack out of town where the nights can be cold and the days often dark with it having only three windows and shitty insulation (that we’re currently working on replacing), but it’s ours, and since we bought it, we’ve been dedicated to cluttering every corner of it with things that add to the sense of it being _our home_. There’s a sofa against one wall, similar to one Eren had in his old apartment only it doesn’t smell horrifyingly of hangover, and on it, a messily stacked pile of blankets has found a permanent home. There’s an excessive number of blankets on our bed, too, but they’re laid out neatly each morning when we make it before we leave for work, and then more often than not, I’ll find one of Eren’s notebooks digging into my spine when I go to lie down on it. When it gets too cold, we’ll light the fire, bundle up together in the largest quilt we own, and huddle as close to the hearth as we can without getting burned, and when it gets too dark, we’ll light the array of candles we have placed all around the house until our living room looks like the lantern scene from _Tangled_ (a movie Isabel and Eren joined forces to coerce me into watching two weeks into knowing each other). It’s worlds away from the flash apartment complex we’d probably share in secret if we stayed in New York, and yet we’re a thousand times more content here than we ever could be there, still trapped and suffocating beneath the weight of other peoples’ decisions.

Much like the house, this is the life we can finally call our own.

“‘C’mere, Bright Eyes”, I murmur, raising my hands to Eren’s flushed face to tug him closer and kiss him fiercely on the mouth. His lips are soft and warm and they taste faintly of the spicy seafood we had for dinner at the local restaurant Farlan is convinced makes the best gumbo you can buy, but what stands out to me most is that even slotted against mine, they’re still smiling. I return the gesture, pulling away just far enough to rest my forehead against his. My smiles are no longer the rarity they used to be—not when there is never a morning where I don’t wake up knowing that here, happiness has found a firm place in Eren’s life, too.

“You know, I heard that there were never any happy endings for runaways.”

He blinks at me once, twice—three times, and for a split second I wonder if he didn't hear me. But then he shakes his head gingerly in time with a fluttering sound caught somewhere between being a soft sigh or a breathy laugh that spills past his lips like runny honey, never quite moving enough to displace his forehead from where it presses comfortably against mine.

“I think this is a pretty happy ending, don’t you? Maybe we just got lucky?”

I stare into his eyes for a moment, remembering the intense determination in them the day we jumped ship at St. Albans and left New York. The stubborn set of his features that one time in the motel room in Oxford when I was abruptly encompassed by doubt and he hauled my ass out of it. His unwavering resolve that had us driving the twenty-three hours to Phoenix last year to fulfill his promise to Armin by making three quick texts on a temporary burner phone that we ditched in a trashcan before returning all the way home.

“Maybe,” I say, relishing our closeness and the sense of belonging that pervades being just another two nameless, labelless bodies in the crowd. Somewhere behind me, Isabel attempts to wolf whistle in our direction, Farlan gasping with laughter when she fails miserably, and somewhere else, Erwin will be enjoying the evening with that rare half-smile of his on his face. And here, it’s just Eren and I, free and finally living and loving instead of running.

Yeah, I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.


End file.
